When all isn’t still, but wants to be. A restless 6-year-old is trying her mother’s patience on the other side of the subway car. She’s twirling around the pole, giggling with every quick rotation, engaged in a power struggle with her mother. Mom starts the countdown. Cinco, quatro, tres, tres y media. Uh-oh. We all know what the countdown means.
The man across from me shakes his head. I can’t tell if it’s in disapproval of the scene unfolding over there, or in response to the newspaper he’s reading, but he does it so frequently I conclude he just disapproves of everything. The other ten or twelve of us shift our weight, our glances, even the space we temporarily claim; the latter at the suggestion of freedom that this annoying little twirler apparently has.
I pile my bags on the seat beside me. As if in a choreographed chorus line, others follow suite. For once, and what a delicious moment it is, we don’t have to make ourselves compact like we usually do when it’s crowded, confining our possessions to our laps or on the floor between our feet. No elbow jabs or rolling eyes, no loud talkers, loud sights, or loud smells, no sensory overload. A near-empty subway car is a sort of playground for us, too.
